Last week, Telemundo 20 spoke with the first of hundreds who were expected to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The group was sleeping in tents and attending legal seminars given by volunteer attorneys from the U.S. about seeking asylum. The first groups plan to try to enter the U.S. on Sunday at San Diego's border crossing.

The caravans have been a fairly common tactic for years among advocacy groups to bring attention to Central American citizens seeking asylum in the U.S. to escape political persecution or criminal threats from gangs.

"We are not terrorists we all have a dream," Mauricio Magana said who is also from El Salvador.

Katherine Flores has traveled with the caravan from El Salvador with her toddler daughter. She told NBC News she wants to give her baby a better future.

“I came because of the gangs,” she told NBC News. “You cannot live in our country.”

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This caravan's numbers pale compared to the roughly 200,000 people who were arrested at the border in Texas' Rio Grande Valley during the spring of 2014 during the administration of President Barack Obama, many of them Central American women and children. Thousands of Haitians seeking to enter the U.S. turned themselves in to U.S. border inspectors at the Tijuana-San Diego border crossing, the nation's busiest.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has space to hold about 300 people at the crossing, said Pete Flores, director of the agency's San Diego field office. It turns them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to determine if they should be held long-term of if they can be released while their cases are pending, often wearing ankle monitors that track their movements.

The San Diego border crossing was so overwhelmed by Haitians in 2016 that U.S. officials worked with their Mexican counterparts to create a ticketing system that let the Haitians in over time. Some waited their turn in Tijuana more than five weeks.

More recently, asylum seekers have had to wait at most only a few hours, never overnight, Flores said. If asylum-seekers make it through initial screenings with asylum officers by establishing "credible fear" of being returned to their homelands, they are allowed in and face what can be lengthy proceedings before U.S. immigration judges.

Ginger Jacobs, a San Diego immigration attorney who helped Haitians seeking entry to the U.S. in 2016, said Trump's concerns about a rush of Central Americans seeking asylum were "completely overblown."

"I don't see this caravan thing being a big deal," she said. "I see it as something the port will be able to handle competently and professionally."

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, in a message apparently aimed at asylum seekers, said Wednesday that anyone who makes false claims to immigration authorities is subject to criminal prosecution. The same goes for anyone who assists or coaches immigrants on making false claims.

Nielsen's threat is consistent with the administration's narrative of widespread "asylum fraud" and claims that asylum-seekers are coached on what to tell U.S. authorities.

The secretary also said asylum seekers in the caravan should seek protection in the first safe country they reach, including Mexico.